Fall To Pieces
by define-serenity
Summary: [Blaine/Sebastian] Whoever wrote we accept the love we think we deserve never met him before he died – he stored it inside his heart as if it were a treasure chest and every dotation a precious gem to add to his private collection. Being loved was never his problem. Not before, and not now. At least not until Sebastian strode into his life. ONESHOT. COMPLETE.


**disclaimer:** without prejudice. the names of all characters contained here-in are the property of FOX and Ryan Murphy. no infringments of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.

**characters/pairings:** Sebastian/Blaine, Cooper, Rachel, Blaine's parents

**warnings:** angst, bullying, VIOLENT IMAGERY, mention of suicide & self harm, past drug abuse, character death (aka zombification)

**author's** **notes:** dedicated to **Ari** and based on her _In The Flesh _Sebastian/Blaine drawings. I'M REALLY REALLY SORRY. let's file this under my "things i should have never written"? lyrics used from _My Heart Is Open_ by Maroon 5 ft. Gwen Stefani.

* * *

><p><strong>FALL TO PIECES;;<strong>

* * *

><p>PDS stands for Partially Deceased Syndrome;<p>

a person with PDS has, at one time in their lives, died and come back to life.

* * *

><p>Ever since the treatments took, the dream has been the same.<p>

He's at the school, a darkened hallway stretched out long and ominous, a quiet whisper of voices breaking through the tried-and-true silence the world adopted since the Rising. They tracked the girl here, her gait quick as she hurried back to the safety of a convenient hideaway, fresh supplies tucked against her chest.

She never stood a chance.

The sound of sneakers skidding over a linoleum floor still remind him of that girl, it forces bile up his throat he can't cough up and the horror of what he did to her makes him see red.

He'd known the girl in a previous life.

Her name was Dottie. And she'd never harmed a fly.

Now all that remained of that kindness got drowned by the snap of her skull beneath his rabid touch, brain matter spilling between bloody cracks before he brought equally bloody fingers to his lips, eating up what he could reach, his companion with the raven hair clawing deeper for dessert.

The doctors take the _involuntary recurrent memories_ as a good sign, his brain successfully repairing cognitive circuitry that started dying the moment blood stopped flowing through his veins. He thinks he's not a computer, and even still computers become unfixable over time too, obsolete models make way for newer technologies all the time, manufacturing discontinued because the world no longer needed damaged goods.

"You'll always be my beautiful boy," his mom will whisper after she injects his daily dose of Neurotriptyline directly into his spinal chord; the miracle drug, developed by a British company, restored neural pathways in his brain, cancelled out the urges, remade him into most of the boy he was before. His mom will hold him through the convulsions and subsequent flashbacks, and press her lips tight to his temple, right over the scar there, as if anything less might make him vanish or make him doubt her love for him.

But being loved was never his problem. Not before, and not now.

He never grants his mother the unthinkable answer, to spare her feelings and guard his own, even though he hasn't said much of anything since the Rising. His mom will apply the FleshTone mousse within that same silence, the sponge caressing over his skin in long even strokes, catching where his scars remained raggedly etched into dead skin.

"Rachel's coming home today," his mom says, the slight twitch in her eye betraying her unease. "Hiram told me she'd drop by later."

He nods solemnly and puts on the IrisAlways contacts, a darker hazel than his original eye color. Despite the loss of vision in his left eye, his family's more comfortable to see him wear them, and he'd wear them every second of every day if he could. Unbelievable as it sounded, they made his eyes sore – apparently contacts weren't for continuous use even if one rose from the grave as a zombie.

"Don't say that, squirt," his brother Cooper told him only a few days ago, when the word again cratered like an asteroid. "You know what you are."

"I am a partially deceased syndrome sufferer." He sighs, thankful Cooper doesn't make him speak into a mirror. His family rarely forces him to spell out his affirmations the way the doctors in the treatment center had, they're content to hear them every once in a while, and sometimes he finds them drift to the surface involuntarily. "And what I did in my untreated state isn't my fault."

Cooper slapped his shoulder. "Atta boy."

He wishes he believed them, that the positive reinforcements bled through his skin and settled along his spinal chord the way the medicine did, then maybe he'd actually be recovering, like Rachel, who'd found a new lust for life, _her second life_, and even made it as far as New York to attend summer courses at the college of her dreams, NYADA.

Nearly a year had passed since the government resettled him with his family, but nothing has changed. His days are one long blur after the other, wasted chunks of time in quick succession morphing into a stale everyday routine; his mother gives him his medicine and touches up his cover-up in places he missed, then retreats to mind her household chores; his father pats his back and kisses his hair before he goes off to work, the unmistakable inhale-exhale of restrained sorrow touching him somewhere deep; his brother will sometimes sit with him, but mostly watches him from afar, and he can't figure out what exactly Cooper hopes to see.

They all feared he might disappear again, that the edges of him would blur and steadily cave in on themselves, that from one second to the next he could pop out of existence as easily as he'd popped in _a second time_. That's why his mom quit her job, why his dad worked from home more often than not, and why Cooper visited from LA, even reclaiming his old bedroom in the process.

They were all afraid to lose him again, while his biggest fear was exactly this, turning into stone, becoming a thing, a porcelain teacup that could break any moment, rather than a person.

But every day he retreats to the sunroom at the back of the house, opens one of the many books his parents provided upon his return, and reads, and reads, and reads.

.

Whoever wrote _we accept the love we think we deserve_ never met him before he died – he drank love and admiration like it was mother's milk, stored it inside his heart as if it were a treasure chest and every dotation a precious gem to add to his private collection. He needed it to live, to get through every day anew, because every day had been a struggle against an intolerant crowd, never accepting him for who he was, who he wanted to be, or who he loved.

Being loved was never his problem. Not before, and not now.

At least not until Sebastian strode into his life.

.

In his second life, Rachel could easily be considered his oldest friend. Buried a mere row apart at the sad little cemetery near the rundown church they'd risen from the grave together. On January 21st 2009, 12:01, they both clambered their way out of the wooden boxes their parents had chosen after careful and meticulous deliberation, dug their way through stone-cold black soil, tore life and limb to get free.

It felt a lot like waking up from a bad dream, the same sense of panic, the same dread that something might be alive in the darkness. Only that particular winter morning darkness proved his sole companion, his first thought _they buried me alive _before he questioned why he needed to be buried in the first place – the illusion of oxygen dissipated and a blind fear struck at the heart of him.

Not alive. _Dead_.

Rachel didn't like the word, dead, too absolute a term even before the leukemia won its final battle; she preferred 'passed' or 'taken' or what the government eventually decided on, 'deceased'. Of the two of them, perhaps even among all PDS sufferers, she managed a positivity that well surpassed their daily affirmations, yet she stood in front of her pink bedazzled mirror every single morning and recited them. _I am a partially deceased syndrome sufferer. And that is not my fault._

She stuck with him throughout the Rising. It wasn't unheard of but most PDS patients didn't have hunting partners in their untreated state, let alone anything akin to friends. Cooper had playfully called them BDFFs, best dead friends forever, before tears shot in his eyes and he realized how insensitive that might sound, but Rachel was especially taken with the term. She found him again when they both came home, and she was the only person outside his family he interacted with, apart from the occasional leisurely chat with one of Rachel's dads.

The Berrys had come by for dinner a few times, mostly at Rachel's insistence, and never failed to wax poetic over their princess' miraculous return. _That_, his mother understood; both he and Rachel fell under the proverbial 'taken before their time', and his mom would be forever grateful that her beautiful boy came back to her. It's Rachel's enthusiasm and countenance that rubbed his mother wrong; she'd never admit it to his face, but she recognized her son in the bright smiles and chipper conversation, in the impromptu musical performances that followed in Rachel's wake, even in her positive attitude in the face of adversity. Rachel underscored everything his mother lost. Because once upon a time, a time far preceding his death date, Blaine Anderson had been a lot like Rachel Berry.

Times had changed.

"Blaine Anderson, where are you hiding yourself?" Rachel's soprano echoes through the house, and an involuntary smile skips over his lips. Discarding his book he stands up and means to meet her halfway, but when Rachel adds, "I'm back! And I brought a friend!" and a second pair of footsteps accompanies hers, he twists on his heels, facing away from Rachel, an impertinent fear threatening to pull apart the staples holding him together.

His hands ball into fists at his side. "You're not alone."

"Don't worry, handsome. He's harmless."

"I'm Sebastian," comes a wonderful tenor, the reflection in the window showing the ghostly impression of a boy. Not alive. _Dead_.

He'd heard of Rachel before he died, a persistent shooting star on the rise who involved herself in the local community theatre, ballet, and her school's glee club, and in the time since he'd come to know her as dangerously impulsive, a soothing elegy to the boy he once believed himself to be, but she'd always respected his wishes. She tried getting him out of the house, tried to get him involved, but she never succeeded. He got too broken for that.

"You know I don't like people seeing me."

An unpleasant crawling starts beneath the surface of his skin.

"Sebastian's one of us." Rachel grabs his hand and twines their fingers. "He was living on the streets. What was I supposed to do?"

In the window he watches the boy retreat back into the house, another victim to Rachel's teenage whims.

"Did you miss me?"

He looks at Rachel, struck once again by how the cover-up took to her skin like she took to the stage, _naturally_, and if it weren't for her unblinking eyes or low body temperature no one would take her for an alive-again girl. He offers the approximation of a smile, one he perfected this past year in the space between other people's expectations and the scars pulling at his lips. "Of course I've missed you," he says, and gives Rachel's hand a reassuring squeeze.

Rachel's one of his sole tethers to the outside world, a breath of fresh air after his own demons steadily filter out all the oxygen, and he doesn't know what he'd do without her. His old friends had all but abandoned him or gone off to college like they were supposed to, forgot all about the sixteen-year old Ohioan whose story had dominated the news for months after details of his death reached the media. Five years and one zombie apocalypse later, and his story became yet another in an endless line of injustices the world couldn't battle. Everyone knew how to kill a zombie, _bullet to the head_, _destroy the brain_, but no one had as yet found a way to fight homophobia.

"I want you to come to my birthday party." Rachel beams at him with a smile that gets everything done. "It'll just be my dads, your parents, and a few of our partially deceased friends."

And Sebastian, he assumes.

"And Finn."

"Finn Hudson?"

Rachel draws up her shoulders, her eyes dark and task-oriented. "He likes me," she says as innocently as she can muster, her acting classes put to use. "He likes me exactly the way I am, even without the cover-up."

Finn Hudson, a gangly high school jock before the Rising, and the same gangly jock now five years later, had a professed crush on Rachel since he was eight years old. And even though Rachel was technically twenty-two now, she lived in the body of a seventeen-year old, and would do so forever. Somehow that had only encouraged Finn, who'd been following Rachel around like a puppy for months. He wonders when Rachel decided he was worth her time.

He casts down his eyes, "That's great, Rachel," afraid that discouraging her might shift her mood before he can turn down her invitation. "But I can't come."

"Nonsense," Cooper's voice sounds from the doorway. "He'd love to come."

"Coop–"

"Your books aren't going anywhere, Blaine."

The lack of a nickname in Cooper's statement chases a howl of a cold through his veins. How can he go outside? Even with the cover-up he can't look at himself in the mirror, the reflection not one of a boy, but the same unthinkable word he can't voice.

"Besides," Cooper lowers his voice to a whisper, pointing back over his shoulder to where Sebastian disappeared minutes earlier, "He's cute."

.

.

_It's just a moment go and seize it_

_Don't be afraid to give your heart to me_

_And if you do, I know that I won't let you down, no_

.

.

In the end he doesn't get a say in the matter. His mom's immediately taken with the idea, even goes as far as buying him some new sweaters, turtlenecks to cover his throat, in a few colors to leave his options open, and he'd have time to worry about his mom and Rachel being in cahoots if he allowed his fear a moment's respite; it sets in his lungs like thick black tar, clogs up his windpipe and makes it harder to breathe, even though he hasn't used any of his vital organs in years.

Still, there's an odd sense of comfort to the wool smoothing against his skin, the feel of it one of the few sensations rising from the grave hadn't stolen from him, the snug fit of the sweater under his armpits and around his throat like a lover's hand being trusted to keep something fragile safe under a similarly fragile touch. It's all part of a ritual he used to take great pride and pleasure in, always determined to look his best no matter who or what he faced, a middle finger to whatever subset of the establishment demanded he stay silent, remain invisible, keep out of sight.

Now that same ritual felt close to punishment. The towel draped over his bathroom mirror hasn't come down once since his return, and any mirror or reflective surface in the house was either strategically avoided or came down the first time his pained expression caught his father's eye.

"How am I supposed to do this, mom?"

"You'll do it like you've always done everything." She touches some rouge to his lips to give them a semblance of color. "With your head held high."

He casts down his eyes to where his hands have wrung together, thinking how years ago such encouragement might've been accompanied by "and with a smile on your face", but even his mom must know the construct of a smile when she sees it. She never says anything though. She likes the illusion.

"We'll be right there with you, honey."

The memory of fresh tears claws around his hippocampus, but they never come, they never will, and that's as great a tragedy as any other. His body can't even pretend to have the answers anymore, it's a dead thing living among other immutable objects. Somewhere along the way he's the one who breathed life into his greatest fear; it pulls at him like he's a ragdoll on a washing line in the middle of a hurricane. He's not in control. It's taken control of him.

Which is why he secludes himself at the party, finds some private balcony half illuminated by moonlight and peers into the dark, waiting for a hand to reach out and pull him down into the black. Maybe everyone would be better off if he did disappear.

"Hi."

He recognizes the voice right away.

"Hi," he replies, politeness part of his genetic code, dead or alive, but raises his shoulders to force his collar higher around his neck, tickling warm and snug at his ears, and pulls at his sleeves too, as if the sweater could insulate him from the social anxiety about to spill out his pores.

But the confident greeting is all he gets – Sebastian doesn't return to the party and doesn't come a step closer or make any indication that he'll continue the conversation he opened. It's nice, at first, to know Sebastian doesn't need small talk or won't ask him to turn around, as if he could, until silence becomes all that they are, they start comprising it out there on the small balcony overlooking a black backyard.

He never thought of solitude as something that could be shared.

"Why were you on the street?"

The question escapes into the fortress of differences between them, cascading up and down walls construed by a life begun, undone, rebooted.

"My dad kicked me out."

"Why?"

A short intake of breath, but Sebastian remains rooted in place.

"He couldn't forgive me for something I did in my untreated state."

The next question slips slithering past the cracks of his own self-blame. "Can you?" he asks, his nightmares playing vividly in front of his eyes, memories of the monstrous things he did, people he killed. Dottie can't have been the only one.

"You know what they say." Sebastian huffs, an approximate attempt at sounding cocky. "I'm not responsible for what I did in my untreated state."

"That's not what I asked."

Steeled quiet settles like a warm blanket on the precipice of emotional turmoil, and when all that follows on Sebastian's part is a hesitant, "No," he can't decide whether Sebastian agrees with him or responds to his initial question.

"What about you?" Sebastian adds. "Have you forgiven yourself?"

_A skull splits open and bloody beneath his fingers, the wet pop ringing in his ears. A girl with raven hair crouches next to the lifeless body and starts digging through juicy brain matter_. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, tight tight tight, as the tremor of remembrance rip-roars through him violently, black tar rises and reaches up to his eye sockets, and–

"Blaine," Sebastian calls softly. "Blaine, you're okay."

He opens his eyes to a cold and dark night, a dead boy lost in the maze of his own damaged memories, all alone in a world that doesn't know what to do with him.

Sebastian touches a hand to his shoulder and squeezes. "I get them too."

Not alone.

He twists his hands around the railing, trying desperately to find comfort within himself rather than make Sebastian's his entire world, but for a boy who met him three days ago he reads his scars like they're braille.

Not alone.

"What do you see?"

Sebastian's hand slips off his shoulder, the imprint of a touch left behind well beneath his epidermis.

"Mine's not a memory."

He realizes it long after silence has re-erected between them and Sebastian joins the party again.

Sebastian's haunted by the things he can't remember.

.

.

_I know you're scared, I can feel it_

_It's in the air, I know you feel that too_

.

.

After the party things return to normal; he sits out in the sunroom reading his books, watching birds flit around the garden with a freedom he envies them, abandoned by time itself. There are course books and notebooks on a small cabinet next to him; "Home-schooling," his father announced a few months previous, both his parents cautiously dedicated to seeing him get his GED, and maybe, who knows, a college degree someday. The idea tore him up inside; years ago he had the grand dream of escaping his life here, of leaving Lima in his rear-view mirror and find a place where he'd fit in, where people would accept him for who he was and even love that about him. He'd be a struggling artist with one or two jobs to support him, a shoebox of an apartment or maybe a likeminded roommate or two. He'd meet a boy, _the boy_, and the past would only serve as a reminder that it does get better, his life needn't be the open wound his bullies kept pouring salt into. No, he'd be a real boy in a big world. He'd blend in without being invisible.

A real boy.

A real _alive_ boy.

He's become less and less that boy and more of a fixed point in a town he abhors but calls home nonetheless. His life has become a boxing match between staying and going, between home and his family and everything outside of it, all of it fear now, blinding paralyzing fear he doesn't dare face. So he stays put in the dead center of a small universe constructed around his particular needs, while everyone made sure to tiptoe around the trauma so clearly marked on his face.

Not going. Not really staying either. _Stuck_.

"Blaine, Sebastian's here to see you!"

It's a Thursday morning, his mom's making lunch for her and Cooper, and he just picked up a new book, discarding one about a boy with facial deformities. He hasn't heard from Rachel or her new friend for a few days, and he'd scarcely given the boy or their conversation any thought.

"Why?" he calls unmoving, unable to decide what Sebastian could possibly want from him.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" his mom sings, back to chopping vegetables in the kitchen.

He huffs, more than a little perturbed at his mom's sprightly tone; Sebastian may well be 'one of us' as Rachel put it, but he didn't feel comfortable around new people. He hasn't _seen _Sebastian, and Sebastian hasn't seen him.

By the time he gets his legs working eons have past, harboring the hope that Sebastian long since gave up and left again, but when he peeks his good eye around a corner in the hallway, there he is, wandered into his field of vision for the first time, and what he sees shocks him.

Sebastian doesn't wear any cover-up, nothing; his skin's flawlessly unscathed but an ice-cold pale, contrasting with the chestnut brown mop of hair, his eyes an unblinking white; he's tall and lanky underneath clothes too big for him, and he'd almost call Sebastian... pretty? Pretty in a way he's never seen any boy, dead or alive, and somewhere deep down, in a place he thought forsaken dead and buried, he longs to see Sebastian smile. He bets he has a great smile.

"Rachel made me come by," Sebastian's voice sends him deeper into the hallway again, afraid, always so afraid to be perceived as that unnamed thing he dubbed himself the first moment he understood what stared back at him in the mirror.

"I'm fine on my own."

"No one's fine on their own, Blaine."

And he thinks it's his name falling in a dulcet tenor from Sebastian's lips that seduces him a step closer, has him cast a glance around that corner again, one eye trained on the dead boy, the rest of him hidden out of sight. He doesn't want to be rude and send Sebastian away at the door, but he hasn't been around strangers in so long, hid his scars far from a world that would rear back at the sight of them. How can he let this boy into his life? Should 'one of us' erase the unease or insecurity that metastasized from his heart outward, where the anxious fluttering might've disappeared along with a steady heartbeat but by no means took his fear with it? On the contrary, his fear has doubled, tripled, quadrupled into a paralysis that keeps him rooted to a place he hates, the place that killed him, among the people that stood by idly and did nothing.

"We don't have to talk," Sebastian says.

"Why are you here?"

"There are so many aspects to that question. Why are any of us here?"

Something akin a smile, a real smile, skips haphazardly over his lips at the hint of the same cocky tone in Sebastian's voice, pulls at the scar running down them. It's a pleasant feeling that settles down his stomach unexpected and warm, even though he hasn't felt warmth or cold in years.

"I guess the simple answer is that I don't have anywhere else to go."

His smile pulls down.

He may be stuck, but Sebastian untethered from his home and was made to live out on the street; no matter what atrocities he committed in his untreated state none of them deserved a fate like that, not after getting ripped from this world, the burn of sudden reentry, and the gift of consciousness – he doesn't feel so strongly about PDS freedom fighters, the so-called Redeemed, but none of them deserved exile.

"I was just reading," he says, fingers tapping irregularly at the wallpaper.

"Read to me," Sebastian begs, barely able to hide the desperate lilt in the request. "Rachel tells me you have a beautiful voice."

He has half a mind to comment that Rachel should learn to mind her own business, but from the corner of his eye he sees his mom duck a smile behind her kitchen towel, and he not too subtly hears his brother snort, so he could chastise his family all the same.

"Come on through."

Sebastian follows him into the sunroom, bright with the sunlight that pours through the floor to ceiling windows, plants and flowers lining the floor front to back, and he imagines it's warm too, like it used to be; that's why he choose this as his hideaway – it's safe in a way the outside world ceased to be yet set apart from it, just like he feels. He pulls at his collar again, red this time, making sure it's snug and safe around his throat before he sits down, facing away from Sebastian.

He stares blankly ahead and feels the pinpoint unease tiptoe up his spine, up the back of his neck until it circles into a would-be headache at his temples. "You really don't have to keep me company."

"I'm not," Sebastian answers, the couch cushion dipping behind him with the added weight. "You're keeping me company."

He tentatively picks up the book he chose earlier, but hesitates. Does he just start– reading? How long for? Why would Sebastian stick around for this?

"Blaine," comes another plea, more desperate still, and Sebastian's fingertips press ever so gently at the small of his back. Subtle as the gesture is the touch itself cascades through all his nerve endings at an alarming pace – there are few people that still touch him, he can count them on one hand; Rachel, his mom, his dad, Cooper, only four, four people that care enough to give him the privilege of comfort from time to time, and in the end that's all it is, a reassuring kiss, a pat on the back, entwined hands to affirm they're both still there. They touch because they have to, for them, for him, to avoid him fading in the background.

But now this, this small meaningful gesture, three maybe four fingers adding pressure to the base of his spine; he wishes he could spool around that feeling, keep it safe for a rainy day when it seems like the end of the world has already happened and forgot to sweep him along, and he needs to be reminded there's beauty in the world. He might've lost all of his, but it lives on in other people, his mom, his dad, Cooper, Rachel, and now Sebastian too, all satellites orbiting him.

Finally he curls up on the couch, his back to Sebastian, and starts reading, quietly at first, his mouth uncertain around the words and new turns of phrases, until he grows a little more familiar with the prose. He's not always sure of what he reads, too focused on keeping his mouth moving and attentively listening for Sebastian, but the taller boy makes no sound. He reads for what must be hours, lunch comes and goes, his father comes home from work, and somewhere when the light outside begins to fade the clatter of dinner plates sounds from the kitchen. As soon as he finishes the chapter the room quiets down, until all that remains are the moans and groans of the house.

Sebastian doesn't move a muscle.

His vocal chords should feel the strain of several hours of reading, but they don't.

"Sebastian," he says at long last, when seconds have turned into moments and the silence into a small castle of glass. It's a nice name to say.

"It's getting late."

He picks at a loose red string on his sleeve. "Yeah."

"Can I come back tomorrow?"

His past should echo warning bells, the offer too good to be true but somewhere somehow 'one of us' means something almost brave, so his lips don't form around a rejection.

"I'd like that," he says.

.

Sebastian holds true to his word. He comes back the next day, and the next, and the day after, until he becomes as set a fixture as he has. Most mornings his mom will let Sebastian in and the two of them talk, the way that moms talk to friends of their sons, and he'll use the opportunity to watch Sebastian from his perch at the end of the hallway, secretly enamored by the way Sebastian's mouth moves around awkward smiles, painfully aware of the ones he has to force. There's a part of him that wants to walk over and touch, smooth his fingers over Sebastian's flawless skin so he might remember what that feels like, but he never does, not once, too afraid Sebastian would actually welcome it.

He never lets Sebastian see him, there's an unspoken understanding between them that he's not ready for that, though he's reasoned something else entirely, that Sebastian seeing him will send him running for the hills and never look back, that Sebastian will leave him here in this barren place to fend for himself and he'll be all alone. But maybe Sebastian knows this, maybe that's why he keeps coming back, maybe there's an identical fear making home in Sebastian's heart the way that Sebastian's presence has become a balm to many of his wounds.

They devour one book after the other; he reads, Sebastian listens, and sometimes Sebastian inches so close to him on the couch that his arm touches his back and he'll never, not ever, move to change positions.

They barely talk, greet each other with a 'good morning' or a 'hi' and rarely tell each other 'goodnight', both too aware that their nights are filled with nightmares, memories, or no sleep at all.

The thought of Sebastian often keeps him up at night, an evanescent shadow at his back though a constant companion, and in moments he secrets away between his sheets Sebastian becomes that boy, _the boy_, the one who made everything better and took him away from this place, his alive-again hands caressing down heated skin until his breath hitches somewhere around a concession; it's not real, it'll never be real, because he's not like other alive-again boys. He's lucky Sebastian sticks around at all.

"Sebastian." He falls silent after reading a line he couldn't repeat if he tried. "Why are you here?"

"I'm looking for something."

He picks at a dog-eared page in the small book. "What for?"

Sebastian stirs behind him but doesn't leave the couch; he suspects his reasons are far more intimate and the thought has scarcely occurred or Sebastian's fingers add pressure between his shoulder blades, the touch as careful as ever, but he closes his eyes to cherish every second of it.

"I don't know yet," Sebastian says. "I'm still looking."

His head falls sideways against the couch cushions and he allows the fantasy to take hold again, of skin to skin contact, of peering into Sebastian's eyes until he's truly lost, of leaning in and brushing his lips against Sebastian's – he's only ever done that to one boy before, someone he suspects moved on a long time ago.

"Do you think you'll ever find it?"

"I'm not sure," Sebastian says softly. "But I think I'm looking in the right place."

.

It's not something he likes to admit, not even in quiet moments when he finds himself awake in the middle of the night conjuring Sebastian's smile closer and closer until it's all that comprises his field of vision – it's such a great smile, like his own used to be, but what he can't, what he _won't ever_, never ever, admit to is how Sebastian has slowly weaseled his way into his heart, into the inner sanctum he created to keep himself safe from harm, from decay, from dying again.

It scares him how much he's started needing Sebastian there, grown dependent on the silent presence of a boy as dead and lost as him, perhaps much too aware that Sebastian could leave one day. That's why he keeps him at arm's length.

.

Until one day, come too soon, Sebastian pushes his luck.

He's barely touched the sponge to his face to apply the cover-up or Sebastian knocks at the bathroom door.

"Blaine," Sebastian calls and doesn't wait for an answer before he opens the door, sending a needling panic through him that has him grabbing for everything and nothing at the same time; the towel draped over the mirror tumbles down into the sink and he whines a pained cry, torn between stumbling backwards into his room or hurtling towards the floor. Either way, Sebastian's presence is unavoidable.

"Sebastian, p-please leave," he stutters, never having felt so naked, so raw and exposed to the bone, his eyes markedly fixed on a stain on the bathroom floor.

"Turn around," Sebastian asks, his voice the same calm it's always been, the calm before the storm this time around, because he's none too sure if Sebastian planned this. He's even more terrified that his mom might've allowed it, gave Sebastian permission to stroll up here and forcibly make his way inside his home, his safe house, his comfort zone. The last time he felt this cornered was–

No, he doesn't think about that day, he tried to cast it as far from his mind as he possibly could, even though the shrinks at the treatment center told him he shouldn't. But his mind can't cope with the implication of that day, the state of not-being, of dying, gone from a world he had such high hopes for.

"I know you think you're different," Sebastian says. "Different than me. Different than Rachel. But we're in this together, Blaine. Please, trust me."

"Trust you?" He grits his teeth together. "When you're violating my privacy?"

"You don't have to be afraid of me."

But he doesn't know, he's never experienced what 'not afraid' feels like, fear is a part of his life as surely as the sky is blue. "Not true," his mom would say, "the sky can be dark or gray or angry," but that felt like a cheat, a platitude up her sleeve for every occasion, every time her beautiful boy got _dark or gray or angry_.

And he is angry, he's angry so often it's become a twin to his fear, a two-faced traitorous creature making house in his circulatory system and no blood left to wash it out. He's angry at his mom for letting Sebastian into her heart but not Rachel, angry at Rachel for forcing Sebastian into his life, angry at himself for being fooled so easily, angry at Sebastian's father for kicking him out, angry at whatever magic brought them back as walking talking corpses, angry at the world that killed him. He gets so angry he could jam a screwdriver straight through the back of his skull so he wouldn't come back, not again, not after the disillusionment that there's no such thing as magic. But for that he lacks another characteristic. _Bravery_.

That same rage makes him turn around, makes him face Sebastian without his cover-up or lenses, without the collar of a sweater covering his throat. That rage is a weakness, he realizes, in moments sparse and too far in between. Because the look in Sebastian's eyes is like none other he's ever seen, infused with a power he's scarcely experienced – his eyes are soft, without pity but not indifferent either, lips parted, and curiosity on the right side of his self-consciousness.

It happens too fast for him to respond.

Sebastian touches his fingers to his face, a touch so tentative and ghostly he can't even be sure it's really there, but he'd like it to be, wants to harness the precious few sensations of a touch long forgotten and store it beneath his skin, let it sink through muscle tissue, race down blood vessels until it sets in his bones, the only things that still keep him standing.

"How did you die, Blaine Anderson?"

It's a memory he tries to push at with all his might, the boom of footsteps closing in on him, the maniacal beating of his heart as he runs, _runs runs runs_, as fast as his feet can carry him trying to escape the clutches of his fears made flesh. There were three of them, to be exact, three flesh bodies chasing him down, hunting him. Still haunting him to this day.

The boys who killed him.

"P-please, leave," he manages, while memories stitch into his epidermis, scald the insults onto his ribs and all the other places they hit and kicked and cut and spat, their eyes rabid with a rage he couldn't believe he caused.

He doesn't want to remember, but these ones are far more involuntary than his nightmares, these images laced with pain his brains forgot, blood his body lost, broken bones the metal spikes and disks are meant to keep together. There aren't many people that can say their fears quite literally killed them, but he came back, he should feel like a conquering hero, a boy undefeated by his demons and alive-again. But he was denied the sweet taste of victory, got new fears thrown at him for his troubles that made the hero into a powerless dead boy.

Why would Sebastian beg this of him now, force the memories to the surface so they can scar some more, leave him sick and paralyzed? They don't know each other well enough for this, 'one of us' doesn't give Sebastian the right to anything, not his trauma, not his story, and definitely not his heart – he keeps that under strict orders not to feel, not to open up, not to do a goddamn thing that might get him killed again. It's strange how utterly non-compliant it's become since Sebastian walked into his life. Maybe that's why he doesn't feel powerless now, not conquered. No, it's much worse than that, Sebastian has utterly and completely disarmed him, has him buckling to his knees when for the first time it's Sebastian who asks, "Why?"

Sebastian has dug in too deep, too tight in between the insecurity of what he can't and what he _won't_ do, a parasite his system can't wash out. _Won't wash out_.

"Look at me," he says, raw, naked, exposed.

"I am."

"I'm–"

How can Sebastian not see, how can he ignore the cut running from his forehead over his left eye, down his cheek, the uniform white of the eye he lost sight in, the split skin at his temple, the crooked cut over his lips, the cruel shallow break in his skin over his throat, held together by metal staples? How can Sebastian be so utterly blind?

His voice drops to a whisper. "I'm a monster."

What fills Sebastian's eyes next is a word he unlearnt, maybe never learned in the first place, a sentiment wholly alien to him and his shriveled heart. "Blaine." Sebastian staggers a step closer and cups his face in his hands. "Blaine, you're–" But whatever word Sebastian searches for might not have been invented yet; the taller boy simply holds him, repeats his name until it loses meaning, stares down into his eyes on a quest for answers he won't find, not in his eyes, not before, least of all now.

"Blaine," Sebastian breathes, his body swaying forward as if he means to kiss him. "You're amazing."

He closes his eyes.

"Don't," he begs and takes a step back, forces a distance between them he never wanted there in the first place. But Sebastian's overstepped his boundaries. He picks up his sweater and tries to get it on, but the sleeves prove traitorous. "Leave, Sebastian!" he shouts, throwing the offending piece of clothing to the bathroom floor, screams tearing at his metal stitches, tears threatening to spill like waterfalls. "I'd like you to– please leave."

To his credit, Sebastian seems to accept that he's not wanted and backs away towards the door; he opens it, pausing in the doorway. "You've got it all wrong, you know," he says in that calm-as-can-be voice of his and he snaps – Sebastian closes the door behind him and a scream escapes, a strangled cry he's held back for weeks, for months, _for years_, pain blanketing his chest with the weight of a dozen dead bodies. He grabs a hairbrush and throws it at the mirror, the glass shattering on impact, leaving behind broken pieces that might as well be tatters of his own skin.

What does Sebastian know? If he covered up he could pass as easily as Rachel does, he doesn't know what it's like for him, to wake up every morning and avoid the monster staring back at him in the mirror, to know that no amount of make-up could ever make him look like a normal boy again.

He sinks down to the ground, ignores his mother's pleas behind the door, and cries tears that never come.

.

.

_But take a chance on me_

_You won't regret it, no_

.

.

Sebastian stays away for three days. The house grows quiet and his mood a little darker, Cooper and his mom treating him to silence they gift-wrap and lay at his feet like accusations – they both think he's at fault for chasing away the lively comfort Sebastian had offered all of them, they don't consider Sebastian's actions as mistakes because he never would've taken that step, he never would've shown Sebastian his scars. To them it's only fair Sebastian pushed as far as he did.

"You shouldn't be alone, squirt," Cooper explained, a sadness in his bright blue eyes Sebastian's presence moderated, now back in full force.

"I'm not alone, Coop."

He forgives his brother for the nickname of old, another tether to the real world as well as to a life he lost.

"You know what I mean."

The most scary thing is he knows exactly what Cooper means, Sebastian made him feel things he hadn't given perch for a very long time and he did it with such ease, so effortlessly, as if he stored all his human ways on a back-up drive and searched for a connection to that in everyone he met. He missed Sebastian, he missed the way he was simply there, undemanding, quietly understanding, _touching_.

Three days prove enough time to forget memories forged so recently, flit from his skin like water in the desert sun.

Three days proves enough for his anger to temper, for that sibling to his fear to shrink into something insignificant yet hurtful, there to remind him how he asked Sebastian to leave, how he's probably keeping him away. As if the devils on his shoulder needed more company. He hurts underneath the weight of his loneliness more than ever before, starts noticing the outlines of his own hideaway, where it starts from his body and ends at the bounds of his family home, his own small cave adjacent to his home left a little emptier since Sebastian left.

And for the first time in what seems a lifetime he decides to be brave, take a chance on the dead boy who seeks out his company and carved out a place for himself in a life that's hardly worth the name anymore. It's the least he owes Sebastian.

He calls Rachel, trying to ignore the fact that his mom and Cooper are listening in from the other room, forcing a deep breath into his lungs for courage.

"Rachel, it's me. Can I talk to him?"

"He's sleeping," Rachel whispers, and he can vividly picture her sitting by Sebastian's side, watching him dream, carding her fingers through his hair whenever dream turns into nightmare. He can picture it because he's imagined it himself, Sebastian's head in his lap, tracing his fingers over prefect features and losing track of time in Sebastian's eyes – he wonders if they were green before, or maybe blue, he can never decide.

"What happened, Blaine?"

"Can you ask him to drop by tomorrow?"

He's not prepared to lay it all out for Rachel, how Sebastian asked too much of him and how he gave Sebastian too little credit, how 'one of us' means so little to him when he doesn't even know what that entails, he's never belonged anywhere, to any group of clique, never had anyone to call his own.

"Hmm," Rachel hums, the short sound betraying her need to protect Sebastian.

"Rachel, please, I–" He plucks at the wallpaper in the hallway before settling his forehead against it, the palm of his hand flat against the wall, making himself as small as possible in a house where there are such few spaces to hide. "I miss him," he confesses to that modest space he's made his own, allows the words to mince inside his bone marrow so all the parts of him that didn't know it yet get the message. He needs Sebastian in his life.

"He misses you too," Rachel says softly. "He doesn't talk about it, but his time with you is special."

He holds back a sob before he chokes on it, before he drops down to the floor and stays there until Sebastian shows up to peel him off the floorboards.

"I'll tell him to come by."

"Thanks, Rachel," he says, and hangs up, his chest weighing under the pressure of it all again, how he's his own worst enemy, made into the devils on his shoulder, his own greatest fear. And if he ever conquers that, if he ever overcomes himself, what couldn't he do?

That thought alone scares him into paralysis.

Cooper joins him in the hallway, calls a soft, "Blainey," but he doesn't move.

"Is this what I do, Coop? Do I push people away?"

Cooper sighs. "You don't let people in."

It's a negligible difference at best, but one that speaks volumes – he needs people around him, he always has, now he just needs them at a comfortable distance or something inside him starts screaming, breaks into pieces like his ribs broke on impacting with sneaker-clad feet. He let Sebastian in, slow and steady, but the moment that got hard to do he revolted against the frail trust he'd granted the boy, without realizing that Sebastian had spun around his spinal chord like an intricate vine, part of his nervous system with runners all the way into his brain stem.

"I screwed up, didn't I?"

"He'll be back, Blaine," Cooper says, encroaching on his personal space until he's wrapped up in his brother's arms. "He'll be back."

.

On Sunday he's up before the break of dawn, his veins animated by a distinct anxiety he thought lost on him. He carefully selects an outfit, a blue turtleneck sweater with big buttons running down one shoulder combined with yellow chinos, and applies his cover-up with the utmost care and attention – by the time the towel comes down over the partially shattered mirror his skin's lost its pale complexion and his eyes are hazel again, though his face shows cuts no make-up could cover up. He's accepted this as his fate, his scars can never heal, but that doesn't mean he has to stare at himself longer than necessary; he takes extra care of his hair, styles it in what Rachel likes to call his Disney-prince haircut. If he's going to face Sebastian again, which he's convinced himself he can, he still wants to look his best.

He sits fiddling for hours, unable to focus on reading, unable to sit still, so he wanders around the house like a lost soul – his mom's working in the garden, Cooper and his father are out bonding, and he winds himself up over what he's going to say to Sebastian. Apologizing seems futile, and he doesn't think he's the one who should apologize, but they've said and done things that can't be erased, things they'll both need to give a place.

Or maybe he's simply making too big a deal out of this.

Sebastian rings the doorbell at around nine; Rachel's dads make her and Sebastian sit at the breakfast table with them, to catch them up on news or hear about their days, and he's had fun picturing Sebastian at the table, suffering in silence.

He draws a hand down his chest, but he's all still there, and opens the door. It's the first time he truly sees Sebastian up close, now that his anger has dissipated and opened up some of the distance between them, and even though he's still self-conscious, Sebastian has to take him how he is now.

"Hi," Sebastian breathes, hands in his pockets, hesitant in the doorway.

Rapping his fingers against the door a few times he moves aside, letting the nervous boy push past him into the house.

"I wasn't sure I would get through the door again."

Sebastian turns to face him, and he's not sure what he wants, if he wants Sebastian to apologize or for things to go back to normal, if he should return to hiding or let Sebastian set even deeper in all the chambers of his heart, in the ventricles and atria until it starts beating again. He can't be without Sebastian, that's his only certainty, 'one of us' implies more than one person and Sebastian's become a seamless part of his solitude, perhaps even the missing half to solve that riddle.

"I'm sorry for what I did," Sebastian says, staring at his feet, shuffling a little.

It's so adorable he's tempted a step closer, swallowing hard as he tentatively reaches out a hand, fingertips caressing down the white cotton of Sebastian's shirt until his hand rests over a stilled heart. Maybe he was at fault as much as Sebastian was, maybe he sent Sebastian all the wrong signals and invited him closer in the first place, or maybe it doesn't even matter now the blunt of the damage has been done.

"You don't look at me the way other people do," he says, because that's where his forgiveness lies, not in the assumed implication of 'one of us', not in the slow burn of whatever relationship they're building, but in Sebastian's eyes, in his thoughtless touches, in the careful twist of words that always imply more than he's been willing to hear up until now.

Sebastian stretches out his hand and thumbs over his jaw. "Would you prefer it if I did?" he asks, while his skin catches the remembrance of warmth inside the palm of Sebastian's hand, which he wishes he could turn into deeper and kiss, have it there forever as an affirmation that he's not disappearing, he has no need to, as long as he has people who can see him.

The odd thing is he'd probably be more comfortable if Sebastian did look at him the way others did, that he orbited him like another satellite, coming closer from time to time before moving back, giving him his space when he needs it and not challenge the existence of his carefully construed bubble. But he can't undo what's been done, he doesn't have the power over life and death and he can't correct old wrongs, he can't fix the world's problems or Sebastian's, he can't un-break his bones.

So all he does is lead Sebastian back into the sunroom, where they pick up their old routine – he doesn't turn his back, or try to hide too much, they sit shoulder to shoulder while he reads, out loud, until moments spin into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into _all is forgiven_.

.

His mother never opens the door for Sebastian again, she makes sure to call for him every time he misses the sound of the doorbell, so he can greet Sebastian, lead him through the house, talk to him before they retreat back into silence. Sebastian never asks him about before, who he was, what he did, and he can't decide if that's because Rachel told him all about it, or if he wants the favor returned. The past just doesn't seem to matter much, that got taken away from them, and any future rested on equally rocky foundations. Whatever the future holds, though, he thinks Sebastian might be part of his, in whatever shape or form.

"Is that your parents'?" Sebastian asks one morning, pointing at the vertical studio piano in the den.

"It's Coop's," he answers, but vividly remembers sitting next to his brother, short legs dangling above ground, touching the keys carefully even though Cooper encouraged him to push harder. "And mine," he admits once the memory takes root, a time in his life when everything still seemed possible, when he looked up to his big brother and was amazed at all the things Cooper could accomplish if only he set his mind to it. He'd become that boy too in the years that followed, but that got confused in high school, when he realized he liked boys the way that other boys liked girls, the way that boys _were meant_ to like girls, and soon not a single day passed that he wasn't called names, shoved around, or worse.

"Sing something to me," Sebastian says, already settling on the bench at the piano, signaling for him to join him.

"I don't do that anymore."

"Did the knife–" Sebastian swallows hard, making a feint for his own throat, but decides not to finish that sentence. It's hard enough to know that Sebastian has seen all his scars, even harder to realize Sebastian has probably tried to explain each and every single one – only two of them were made by a knife, the others results of the heavy blows he received. It's not something he's ready to talk to anyone about.

"No, it didn't hit my vocal cords." He sits down next to Sebastian, running a finger up and down a single key, gathered a little dust since the last time his mom cleaned it. "I just don't really sing anymore."

"A damn shame, if you ask me."

Sebastian places his fingers on the keys and starts playing a faintly familiar tune, one that activates sensation after sensation in the emotional center of his brain, spins around a memory of a Sadie Hawkins dance and his first kiss, shared quickly in the cover of dark, two beautifully full lips pushed to his and a fire in his belly that nothing or no one could've put out. His name was Sam, an out-of-state transfer who became one of his closest friends. But Sam couldn't decipher his own feelings, felt as lost and confused as he had only a few years before, and when he finally mustered the courage to act on what his heart told him—

He often wonders if Sam attended his funeral.

"_There's a place, that I know_..." the lyrics escape him unintended, "_It's not pretty there but few have ever gone_..."

Sebastian doesn't miss a beat, he keeps up with his rhythm while his pale wiry fingers play over the keys, a genteel smile curled around his lips. He can't figure out what it is about this boy that makes him challenge his own beliefs, why it's Sebastian, a stranger up until a few weeks ago, who coaxed him out of that backroom, who forced him into the light again, who somehow makes him self-conscious and confident and shy all at the same time and that never seems to contradict each other; Sebastian brings all these things to life inside him, and for the first time ever, _ever ever_, he doesn't face that with absolute terror.

"_Don't run away … don't run away_ ..."

The music echoes along the walls for a few moments longer after Sebastian's fingers slip off the piano keys, his voice carrying the final notes of the song and a plea saturating his every word.

"_Promise you'll stay _... "

Slowly, gently, the house turns silent again, Cooper and his mom gone quiet too, as if the sound of silence in the wake of his singing is the most precious thing in the world and needs to be nurtured. Then, Sebastian leans in and he closes his eyes, waiting, seconds passing, until Sebastian's lips touch his cheek, leaving behind a promise, a hidden phrase planted right over his scars; he coils his entire existence around the barely-there sensation, locks it up somewhere inside his chest like a precious gem.

"Thank you," Sebastian says.

"You can't–" he starts, but stops himself in time. If he told Sebastian he can't kiss him so unprompted, that he can't take intimacy whenever he pleases, Sebastian would ask why, and he honestly has no answer to that question. Sebastian only ever seems to demand what he knows he can get, and it's truly startling how much that has become these past few weeks. There's something unspoken between them, things that need not be said, the 'one of us' steadily spun into 'the two of us' where they've developed their own secret language, their own coded touches.

"I can't what?" Sebastian whispers, lingering a few inches away.

He smiles sadly, focused on the alternation of black and white keys. "Never mind."

When Sebastian kisses his cheek he hears the "You deserve to be loved" wordlessly, and the conviction doesn't set nearly as surely as his care for Sebastian; it's not something he'll ever get used to hearing, not from anyone. Maybe _we accept the love we think we deserve_ applies to him after all, because he doesn't know where to put this, it's becoming increasingly hard to tell his heart no but his anxiety strengthens right along with it.

He doesn't know how much longer he can keep going before he starts pushing Sebastian away too.

Maybe it's time Sebastian knew.

.

.

_One more 'no' and I'll believe you_

_I'll walk away and I will leave you be_

.

.

It takes him days to decide on a course of action. He can't talk about what happened to him, he doubts he ever will; the one time Cooper asked him about it he'd shut down completely, reliving every second, each blow reverberating through his bones once more, every 'pussy', 'faggot' and 'cocksucker' like barbs picking at wounds that will never heal, and no one's brought it up since, afraid it might send him into a tailspin of relapses, or worse, self-harm.

Telling Sebastian won't be easy, _showing_ Sebastian won't be easy, but his anxiety has transfigured into one of the demons on his shoulders, whispering sins and bad advice, exciting him like a sock puppet – his past is past and shouldn't figure into any relationship, not after coming back to life, but it's his way of keeping people at a distance, his trauma a barrier he won't let people break through.

There's a box up in the attic, white carton with a lid that's too small, one his parents keep around for legal reasons, but have hidden underneath old schoolbooks, clothes that haven't fit in years but they never get around handing in to goodwill, and his old bassinet, which his mom considered selling at one point, but couldn't part with in the end.

He's never opened the box, and he can't recollect how he gained knowledge of its existence in the first place, but it can't have been too long ago; there's not enough dust on top of the lid for it to have remained untouched for five years.

"There's something I want to show you," he tells Sebastian when he shows up at his door the next morning, and instead of leading him into the sunroom they go up to his bedroom; he wants no prying eyes around for this, he wants to see Sebastian react without any interference from his brother or his parents, who'd probably warn him against this. But he needs Sebastian to know, needs him to see all of him and make up his mind all over again, maybe then he'll realize how hard it is for him to let anyone in.

Sebastian sits down on his bed and asks no questions once he pushes the folder of newspaper clippings into his lap, once his eyes catch on the first title 'Gay teen killed after Sadie Hawkins dance', skip over words like 'defenseless' and 'his three attackers' and he dies a little again—

It'd been such a beautiful night; he and Sam both decided to go to the dance alone, since neither of them had dates, but spend the night talking and joking around. He would've danced if someone had asked him, but he'd been equally content with Sam's company, the two of them so in tune with each other it was a magical night all the same. He and Sam left the dance together, sat outside in the parking lot waiting for Sam's mom to pick him up, and somehow, in between the magic and the butterflies in his stomach, they'd both been brave enough to take a chance, to say to hell with bullies and intolerance, with ignorance and hate and homophobia, and they shared a kiss, his first kiss, Sam's first kiss, _their_ first kiss, and he was alive. So very much alive.

Now, so many years later, he tells himself he let his guard down, but he knows he had no sense of what that meant back then. Sam's mom picked him up and he would walk home with a new trip in his step, the promise of a better life, until a "Hey, Anderson! How about a kiss for us?" stopped him dead in his tracks. Turning around he wasn't faced with one, but three boys from the football team, three seniors who hadn't left him a moment of peace all year.

He should never have run, he should've stayed close to the school, ran indoors again and find a teacher, but his fight-or-flight instinct took him to an alleyway a block from the school, where his attackers caught up to him.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," Sebastian says, discarding the folder to a corner of the bed.

"No one chooses how they die."

He looks up at Sebastian, his eyes downcast and his long fingers wiring together.

"Did you?" he dares ask, because Sebastian hides it even better, the 'how he died' hidden behind a strong façade and snarky comments, beneath soft touches that beg for so much more than he could ever give. Sebastian got broken by life the same as him, and he long since suspected that happened before he died and came back, too.

"Thought about it," Sebastian answers. "Might have."

It's been clear for a long time that there are things Sebastian can't or won't remember, not just from the years he spent untreated but the time before; he guessed drugs had to do with that, but he never asked. He never needed to know before.

"I got high and crashed my car into a streetlight."

Sebastian stands up and pulls up his sweater, revealing awfully dark patches on his skin– _broken ribs_, he realizes, Sebastian must've bled internally and lost consciousness, any help arriving too late. Why did he think Sebastian wouldn't have any scars?

"Does that change the way you think about me?"

"No."

His heart aches for all the injustices in all the world but he'll never fault people for being different, for finding solace in narcotics or alcohol or anything else that might numb the pain of a hard life. He might not know the specifics, maybe Sebastian's reasons might've upset him in another life, but not this one, not one where he can't even fathom why knowing about his past doesn't change the way Sebastian thinks _about him_. But somewhere in there he knows his logic is flawed.

"I thought about it too."

They're thoughts he only allowed inside in his darkest moments, when it seemed all hope was lost and not even his fantasies offered an escape from a life that continually beat him down, that never let him be who he was, that judged his every step.

Sebastian's lips part but he grants him the courtesy of not asking questions.

"But I was too scared of what it might do to the people I loved. And at the end of the day, I think I wanted to live. I wanted to get away from my life here."

A small shake of Sebastian's head startles him out of the remembrance and the taller sneaks a step closer again, raising a hand to his cheek.

"Why aren't you screaming?" Sebastian asks softly.

"Would you?"

Sebastian dares another step closer. "Until my lungs gave out," he whispers, searching his face for something he long lost the meaning of, Sebastian's thumb caressing half circles into his withered skin.

"I've forgotten what it feels like to scream," he confesses, an itch at the back of his throat attesting to the fact. "I've forgotten what it feels like to feel."

"You have a second chance at life." Sebastian's other hand cups his other cheek. "You can't give up."

"Are you going to save me, Sebastian?" he huffs. "I'm not a quick fix you can shoot into your veins."

He didn't mean to make it sound offensive, but the more of these platitudes Sebastian pulls out his sleeve the more uncomfortable he gets – he's heard all this before, from his parents and friends before he died, from the therapists at the treatment center, from Cooper and Rachel and everyone who felt like they got a say in how he lived his second life.

"You're not broken."

The scream breaks free.

"Look at me!"

He grabs around Sebastian's wrists.

"You think these are all my scars? You think the real ones can be covered up?"

How does Sebastian not see?

Why can't he accept that he died and never really came back?

Not alive. _Dead_.

"You can't save me, Sebastian. There's nothing to save. There's only this shell that walks and talks, but the real Blaine died years ago. I just never had the courage to admit it."

Sebastian remains un-rattled. He wonders what it would take to undo Sebastian Smythe.

"I didn't fall in love with a shell."

It hits with the exact magnitude of three atomic bombs; one the impact, another the explosion that destroys everything in its wake, the next the radioactive cloud that slowly infects and poisons every living cell it can find. _But threefold_.

"You're–" He releases Sebastian's hands and jerks a step back, unspooled by a few choice words. No one, no one, _no one_ could ever truly love him. He's a monster. "You're not in love with me."

Sebastian laughs, something sweet and precious and almost shy, like it's his first time confessing his feelings to a boy. "This shell then," he says, his eyes wide and open, and his face– and that smile–

No. _No one_.

"I'm in love with this walking talking shell of a boy."

He shakes his head, fear and anger playing a seesaw game across his back. This was a mistake, he should never have told Sebastian, let him push past the barrier that kept him safe, that kept people at a distance, that made his solitude comforting. Solitude isn't something to be shared, it's not something that can be fixed, it's his and his alone and he stands to reclaim it.

"You're strong, Blaine."

No, no, _no_, he shakes his head, if he was strong he would've fought back, he would've been smart enough to run into the school, if he was strong he'd be able to read those newspaper clippings without coming undone, if he was strong he wouldn't threaten to fall to pieces every time someone tries to crawl inside his chest and set up shelter there.

Instead he's the boy who let his bullies kill him, who let his fear conquer him, whose heart stopped beating in the back of an ambulance and didn't start up again.

Sebastian sighs. "But maybe you're right. Maybe you're not the person I thought you were."

The rejection hits him harder than he thought it would, than he ever thought it could. His logic isn't logic at all, it's a fairytale where he's set himself up as the main character, where everything is perfect and the tale has a happy ending.

It's a fallacy of a fantasy.

Cooper was right, he doesn't let people in. Sebastian's right, he should be screaming and reclaiming this second chance he's been given. His mom's right, the sky gets dark and gray and angry, but that doesn't take away that sometimes it's blue, that sometimes hope is warranted.

"Sebastian," he whispers, but his would-be savior has long gone, walked right out of his life like he thought he would, like he always knew he would. It was only a matter of time.

He sits down on his bed, the folder of his past toppling off and articles scattering all over the floor, a history of his murder, the trial his parents went through, and he can't say it, he can't talk about it, his rage lives in his scars and the staples holding his flesh together.

But if he was strong enough he'd be able to let Sebastian love him.

.

.

_And that's the last time you'll say no, say no to me_

.

.

He stays in bed for an entire week, wrapped up in that kind of static numbness he imagines follows whenever a person you care about walks out of your life. Every night Cooper sits down next to him and tells him what went on downstairs that day, even though it's never that exciting and he really only longs to hear the words _Sebastian came by_. But he's accepted that he's dutifully pushed Sebastian away. His mom and dad kiss him good morning and goodnight, but they seem at a loss over what to do or say.

"I screwed up, mom," he says, hugging a pillow close to his chest else it might cave in like his heart has. "He's in love with me and I– I chased him away."

Ever since he came out at fifteen he's been able to talk about boys with his mom freely, despite the fact that he never had a proper boyfriend. But she knew about Sam and practically forced Sebastian into his life; this can't come as a shock to her.

"My beautiful boy." She cards her fingers through his hair. "I don't know where you get the idea that once things are said they're set in stone."

He frowns and sits up, looking at his mom, no contacts, little cover-up. He's going to wear the scars of what happened to him forever, it'll be the first thing people see when they look at him and the last thought on their mind as they part ways.

"I'm going to be sixteen forever."

"So is Sebastian," his mom says. "You two are the most self-aware boys I have ever met."

He doesn't know why he keeps having to hear it from other people, why he can't abstract one thought from the other in his jumbled mess of memories.

_My dad kicked me out_.

_No one's fine on their own, Blaine_.

_I don't have anywhere else to go_.

_You're keeping me company_.

_Does this change the way you think about me?_

He doesn't know why he needed it pointed out to him, underlined, bolded, italicized. **_Sebastian needs him in his life too_**.

Right after his mom leaves the room he springs into action; he gets dressed and retouches his cover-up, pops in his contacts and shouts a hasty 'bye' before he bolts out of the front door – if he slows down he'll talk himself out of it, he'll become too aware that he's out in the open again and everyone can see him, scars and all, and he'll retreat back into the sunroom, abiding his days until the end of time. He doesn't want to be that boy, he never has, dying did that to him, fear dragging him down into the depths by his bootstraps.

Rachel's house isn't that far but it feels like the other side of the world, and by the time he rings the doorbell his bones have turned feverish, like they remember exactly what hot and cold feel like but can't decide between the two.

Sebastian opens the door.

"Blaine, what are you doing here?"

His tongue turns big and heavy in his mouth, everything he thought he'd say whisked away at the sight of Sebastian. He wants to say it all, how coming back to life wasn't a cure like it happened to be for Sebastian, how his loneliness tears at him harder than anything ever could, how he's scared and angry all the time to the point of bursting, how he's in love, he's so -_so so so_- in love but he's terrified of expressing that.

"You're shaking." Sebastian pulls him inside, closing the door behind him, and starts rubbing up and down his forearms. "You shouldn't have walked here, I know you–"

"I wanted to see you," he blurts out. "I wanted to apologize for what I said. Because you–"

There's no point in keeping it locked up anymore, a second life warrants a little more bravery than he's used to, being in love and expressing that a bravery that cuts even deeper because it entails surrender, disarmament, but he gave Sebastian that a long time ago.

"Sebastian, you make me feel safe."

Safe was always a dangerous thing, letting his guard down got him killed last time, but his killers are in jail, his nightmares can't hurt him, and Sebastian– yes, like a Mobius strip he's right back where his reasoning began, Sebastian will keep him safe.

Sebastian smiles, that pretty smile he longed to see the moment he laid eyes on him. "Not something you would've said if you'd known me before."

And he smiles too, his heart singing for the first time in forever _ever ever_. "Maybe that's why they call us the Redeemed."

Seconds spin into moments, moments into–

_All is forgiven_.

"You're catching on," Sebastian says softly, the back of his hand brushing his cheek, eyes falling to his lips. And he's in love, he's so so so in love, but that's never been safe, being in love came with a big red warning sign and a bull's eye on his back.

He's not ready. Not yet.

"Sebastian, I can't–"

"That's okay."

The words dapple along his spinal chord as Sebastian pulls him against his chest, long arms winding around his shoulders with a promise that he'll never let go again, and he wants to cry, wishes he could cry out the rivers and oceans he's held back for no other reason that _monsters don't cry_. In Sebastian's arms he's not a monster, he's a dead boy in love with another alive-again boy, their loneliness the same, their solitude shared.

"It's okay."

Maybe he shouldn't call it solitude anymore.

.

.

_If you don't ever say yeah_

_Let me hear you say yeah_

_Wanna hear you say yeah yeah yeah_

_'Till my heart is open_

.

.

He gives his mother a near-heart attack every time she catches him putting on his coat to visit Sebastian, but it's nothing compared to the peaceful relief that's sunk into the house's foundations; they're all happy for him, his mom, dad, Cooper, something they never fail to tell him, or tease him about, in Cooper's case.

"I told you he was cute," Cooper says, an index finger pointedly trained on him. "Didn't I tell you he was cute?"

He'll smile and shake his head fondly, and think maybe this is what Cooper came home for, maybe that's what he's been looking for all this time. His baby brother's smile.

They take turns now, sometimes Sebastian comes to his house and they cuddle up on the couch together, talk or read for hours until dusk sets in. Or he goes to the Berrys, where he'll stay for dinner too, hearing all about Rachel's day at school, or the new play she's starring in, or Finn, who has become a fixture at the Berry table of late as well. The past is in the past and the future remains rocky, but he decides it's like that for everyone, and nothing's set in stone.

The night of Rachel's re-debut on stage he goes home to change before heading back out – Sebastian assured him he looked fine but he wanted to make sure Rachel would think the same; she held him up to a much higher standard, after all.

The sun has set behind the horizon by the time he gets going, he pulls his coat tight around his body and his beanie a little lower over his ears, his footsteps still hurried every time he ventures outside. One never knows what might be lurking around the corner, or the next, what could creep out of alleyways and eat him alive. Most times he manages to silence the demons on his shoulders, it's not far and once he's with Sebastian his anxiety dissipates, so it's a short time suffering for a big payback.

"Hey, Anderson!" a voice shouts behind him and he stops dead in his tracks, pinned down to the ground, his knees nearly giving out from the sheer terror that almost literally cuts him in half. He can't move, he can't turn around, all he can see is three flesh bodies coming his way and beating him bloody on the cold hard pavement.

This can't be happening to him again.

"Blaine!" the voice calls, a pair of footsteps closing in behind him. A pair of heels, too. "Blaine, are you okay?"

He frowns, the voice familiar in a distant kind of way.

"It's me."

He turns around slowly, coming face to face with his first ever kiss, the first boy he ever loved, and a cute blond girl who has her arm hooked into Sam's. The past five years have been good to Sam, he's lost some weight and by the looks of it he works out regularly. He had no idea Sam still lived here. He had no delusion that if they ever met again Sam would actually recognize him, or in this case care enough to call out to him.

"Sam? _Sam I am_?" Sam prompts, and he nods. At least he thinks he does. Sam looks at him the same way he always has, without judgment, without prejudice, it's like his scars aren't there at all, like he's a real alive boy meeting a friend out on the street. "This is my girlfriend, Quinn."

"I've heard a lot about you," Quinn says. "I'm sorry for what happened to you."

He looks at Quinn, then at Sam; Sam told his girlfriend about him?

"Thanks," he says. At least he thinks he does.

"How have you been?" Sam asks, as if no time has gone by at all, as if he never died and came back to life, as if he hadn't killed people like Dottie, as if –

As if he wasn't responsible for what he did in his untreated state.

"I– I need to be somewhere," he stutters, and staggers a step backwards.

Why does he keep having to hear it from other people?

"Yeah, of course." Sam shrugs. "Maybe we can talk sometime."

"Sure," he says, and turns on his heels, and before he knows it he's running, speeding down the pavement because he has somewhere to be, someone to see, _something to say_. His head's been a mess ever since the Neurotriptyline made him cognizant again, old memories, in between memories, new thoughts and impressions, his body an immutable monstrous thing, imbued with all the horrendous things he did. But he's not those things, he's Blaine Anderson, big dreamer, overachiever, he was meant for something more.

He hits the Berrys front door with a closed fist, bangs it five times before there's movement, his newfound vigor pulsing through his body and nerve-endings as if he got re-animated yet again.

"Blaine," Sebastian breathes as the door opens and he rushes inside. "What happened?"

He grabs around the lapels of Sebastian's jacket, pulls so hard the stitches might come apart. "I'm not a monster," he says, shaking his head, holding onto Sebastian for dear life. It's not a sad realization, it's not something that sets in his scars or pours salt in old wounds, it's something _good_.

"Of course you're not."

"I'm not what they made me into."

His killers didn't take anything from him, not his life, not his beliefs, not his ability to love, all that happened inside his own head and he held onto that too strongly. He's not a killer, he's not lost his beauty, he deserves to be loved.

"I'm not–"

Excitement bats at the demons on his shoulder, personifying into its own benign little entity.

He's alive. He's so very much alive. Not dead.

"You're Blaine Anderson." Sebastian smiles, some of his excitement bleeding out of his pores and shooting straight up Sebastian's veins. Sebastian somehow realized all this long before he did, about himself, about him, maybe Rachel taught him that.

"Blaine Anderson. Alive again," Sebastian adds. "And you're beautiful. You're beautiful, Blaine."

He pushes up on his toes; it happens between the magic of the moment and the place Sebastian's steadily claimed in his heart, and Sebastian meets him halfway, their lips touch with a promise and hope for the future, his hands will explore Sebastian's chest until he finds his heartbeat, his lips will find Sebastian's time and time again because he doesn't need this town, he doesn't need that house or its backroom. He only needs Sebastian.

"Don't let me go," he whispers to Sebastian's lips. "Don't ever let me go."

They kiss again, and again, and again, they miss Rachel's play and he misses his self-imposed curfew, giving his mother another near-heart attack. But once they show up at the house hand-in-hand, there's nothing much anyone has to say.

.

.

_Yes yes yes yes yes yes_

_Yes yes yes yes yes_

.

.

Whoever said not to make homes of human beings never accounted for zombie apocalypses, or the absolute despair that came after reawakening into a world that hadn't changed at all, it had simply set around a certain amount of coarse beliefs and kept on turning. He needed someone like Sebastian to walk into his life, someone who unhinged his fixed center and swept him along the same path his once-alive dreams would've led him – Sebastian picked and prodded until he fell to pieces, until the world made sense again, until he found himself amongst the shards of his old existence.

Being loved was never a problem for him. Not before the Rising, and not now.

Not since Sebastian Smythe strode into his life.

.

.

.

**_THE END_**


End file.
